11.10 slower to boot and shut down than 11.04

[ubifree]

One of the things I liked about 11.04 was its fast boot time and particularly fast shutdown time. I especially enjoyed showing off the shutdown time to Windows users - great for a quick getaway at the end of a hard day's work!

So I was disappointed after upgrading to 11.10 that it's both significantly slower to boot into a working state and also to shut down. I've upgraded 3 computers from 11.04 to 11.10 and they're all slower - shutdown now takes 14-15 seconds compared to just 4. On one computer I noticed it says it's failed to 'ask' a process to terminate and I guess it then times out and kills the process(es).

Has anyone else noticed these slower startup and shutdown times compared to 11.04; and is there anything we can do to get it back to approaching 11.04 performance? (I see someone else (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_oneiric_oktoberfest&num=2) has noticed the slower boot speed.)

[jakbest]

oh yes it is slower and i think that the process is about the network manager or something like

[Mark Phelps]

I've noticed it, too. I've been dual-booting with Ubuntu and Windows versions side-by-side since 7.04. The last Ubuntu version that was really fast for me was 10.04. Ever since then, they've gotten slower and slower (in terms of boot and shutdown). Surprisingly, my Win7 boot is now much faster than Ubuntu.

[ubifree]

Thanks for the replies - I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed this! So does anyone know if the ubuntu development team are planning to reduce boot time or shutdown time, or even consider it an important thing to look at?

If a single process accounts for the longer shutdown time that would be good to know. jakbest mentioned the network manager. It does seem like a process is failing to die when asked. Either this process has changed since 11.04 or it's a new process in 11.10.

[anur.bhargav]

Boot/Shutdown times have increased considerably in Ubuntu 11.10. Its quite annoying:(.
I did a clean install and yet my shutdown time is 15s and boot time is 50+ seconds. Ubuntu was no way like this. On Natty shutdown=3~4s and boot=35~40s
Memory: 2 GB at 1333Mhz
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E8300 @ 2.83GHz × 2
Graphics: Intel® G33 x86/MMX/SSE2
OS Type: 32-bit

Even I hope this will be looked into by the developers in 12.04 ? I also see a bug report here https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/874723
I'm really looking forward for reduced boot/shutdown times :)

[Eberbachl]

Agreed...

My Desktop machine (AMD 6 core, 8GB RAM, Seagate 7200.10 HDDs) running 11.10 is significantly slower to boot and shut down than my cheap and cheerful ASUS K52jr laptop (Core i3 M530, 4GB RAM, 5400 2.5" laptop HDD).

It's very frustrating!

(BTW: Unity works nicely in 11.04 on the laptop and is broken (Swipe, Workspace Switcher) in 11.10, both running ATI drivers).

I hope some upcoming updates fix 11.10 pretty soon, or I'll have to roll the desktop back to 11.04.

:(

[zob]

I also have slower boot times. But the real bit difference relative to earlier releases is in shut-down time.
This slow shut-down happens on 2 out of my 3 computers running 11.10.
I happens on my netbook (intel N10 integrated graphics) and my desktop (NVIDIA 7800GS), but not on my laptop (thinkpad T60 - ATI M RADEON X1400).
It kind of hangs on the desktop when I choose shut-down from the system menu (in unity).

However both of the 2 computers with that problem shut down in normal time (more or less) if I give the command in a terminal

sudo shutdown -h now

Then a shut-down that can take around 25-30 seconds suddenly happens in 5 secs.

I would like to hear if you guys experience the same.

Also what is the difference between what the shutdown button does and what the shutdown command does? I don't see what the "extras" would be by pressing the button.

[subechivas]

I have similar problem, but more of a login delay than a boot delay. My boot is about the same as before the upgrade. But after i enter my password and hit login, it basically freezes showing only the desktop background for a good minute before it finally shows all my icons and toolbars. I hate it. Is there an easy way to go back to the previous version of Ubuntu?

System:
AMD Phenom 9850 quad core
4GB RAM
512MB ATI HD Radeon card
500GB HD

[bashishtha]

I also observed that 11.10 is slower to boot & shutdown than 11.04. Besides this the applications (Like LibreOffice and games etc.) also take longer to start than before.

My system is:
Intel P IV HT, 1 GB RAM, NVIDIA 9800 GT 1 GB graphics.
Ubuntu 11.10 and Win XP Pro in dual boot on separate HDD.

[BillyBoa]

I also have slower boot times. But the real bit difference relative to earlier releases is in shut-down time.
This slow shut-down happens on 2 out of my 3 computers running 11.10.
I happens on my netbook (intel N10 integrated graphics) and my desktop (NVIDIA 7800GS), but not on my laptop (thinkpad T60 - ATI M RADEON X1400).
It kind of hangs on the desktop when I choose shut-down from the system menu (in unity).

However both of the 2 computers with that problem shut down in normal time (more or less) if I give the command in a terminal

sudo shutdown -h now

Then a shut-down that can take around 25-30 seconds suddenly happens in 5 secs.

I would like to hear if you guys experience the same.

Also what is the difference between what the shutdown button does and what the shutdown command does? I don't see what the "extras" would be by pressing the button.

I have a similar problem with shutdown, but it was surfaced when I installed my favorite default applications and uninstalled the ones I don't use. I think the problem has to do with the system balance, you touch it and that's it.

Now I'm trying to fallback for each one application, to see which one is causing the problem.

About the boot times I disagree with the speed comparison. Ubuntu 11.10 continues to be way faster than Windows7 in boot timing.

I don't have concrete time tables but I'm going to make some tests. Windows will have always longer boot times because of the antivirus installed.

[Mark Phelps]

About the boot times I disagree with the speed comparison. Ubuntu 11.10 continues to be way faster than Windows7 in boot timing.

It was an observation, one that is TRUE in my case.

I'm also booting with Win8DP -- and again (in my experience), each Windows version (since Vista) is booting (and shutting down) faster and faster, while each Ubuntu version (since 10.10) is booting (and shutting down) slower and slower.

It only stands to reason that as Windows gets faster, and Ubuntu gets slower, eventually the two paths will cross and Windows will end up being the faster of the two.

But even then, it will vary by machine and by configuration.

[ubifree]

However both of the 2 computers with that problem shut down in normal time (more or less) if I give the command in a terminal

sudo shutdown -h now

Then a shut-down that can take around 25-30 seconds suddenly happens in 5 secs.

I would like to hear if you guys experience the same.

Also what is the difference between what the shutdown button does and what the shutdown command does? I don't see what the "extras" would be by pressing the button.

On 2 of the 3 computers I upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10 using 'sudo shutdown -P now' made no difference (I haven't tried on the 3rd yet). They still take 14 seconds to shut down compared to just 4 secs in 11.04. So, for me, using this command is no faster than using the Shut Down menu option.

I still reckon there is some ill-behaved process which shuts down on request in 11.04 (assuming it existed then) but which has to be killed in 11.10. Because on one of the computers it says something like "Requesting processes to stop"....<10 second wait> "Failed...Terminating remaining processes" <shuts down in 4 seconds>. Does anyone know what this process is or know how to find it? Hopefully there is only one process like this but there could be more.

[Stovey]

...Has anyone else noticed these slower startup and shutdown times compared to 11.04...

Yes, definitely slower. I have an Acer Aspire 1810T. Here's hoping 12.04 LTS will have lighting quick start-up and shut-down times!!

[efflandt]

I hadn't run Natty since it was in development. But I was impressed with the boot time of 11.10 installed from scratch on the same SSD I used for Natty Development (while its Unity desktop was still somewhat buggy).

64-bit 11.10 boots from grub menu to login prompt in 8 seconds and from there to desktop in less than 2 seconds. That is faster than Maverick and MUCH faster than 64-bit Win7 booting from 7200 rpm Sata2 drive (which based on hdparm is half as fast reading as the SSD). I boot from 11.10's grub2 on sdb (the SSD).

I have not timed shutdown, but Linux always shuts down quicker than Windows. If you upgraded instead of fresh install, maybe something old is lurking that does not exit right away.

I recently had some issues with screen lockup frequently in Windows and less often in Linux, but it might have been a faulty HDMI cable. The problem has not repeated since switching to DVI to HDMI cable.

[Worlds Tallest Engineer]

I have also found 11.10 to be slower then 11.04. One of many things I don't like about it. Douse anyone know how to change it back to 11.04?

[syoung27]

My shutdown can take oh...a good minute even sometimes. and i have a pretty solid laptop.


One of the things I liked about 11.04 was its fast boot time and particularly fast shutdown time. I especially enjoyed showing off the shutdown time to Windows users - great for a quick getaway at the end of a hard day's work!

So I was disappointed after upgrading to 11.10 that it's both significantly slower to boot into a working state and also to shut down. I've upgraded 3 computers from 11.04 to 11.10 and they're all slower - shutdown now takes 14-15 seconds compared to just 4. On one computer I noticed it says it's failed to 'ask' a process to terminate and I guess it then times out and kills the process(es).

Has anyone else noticed these slower startup and shutdown times compared to 11.04; and is there anything we can do to get it back to approaching 11.04 performance? (I see someone else (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_oneiric_oktoberfest&num=2) has noticed the slower boot speed.)

[lawsondba]

I seems to be all around slower them my 11.04. I did a fresh install on a new ssd drive (250MB/s) vs my old 11.04 on a older ssd setup and around 200 MB/s.
I am also noticing slower graphics performance.
I have a nvidia 280 gtx Same driver on both systems, 11.10 seems to be sluggish dragging windows around.

I using 11.04 system again:D.

[mgt2000]

Same is here. It is very slower than 11.04 and it takes more than 1min to system start in 11.10 while it was less than 30 sec in Ubuntu 11.04!!!

[Joshas]

Same here - Ubuntu 11.10 startup and poweroff times got a lot longer, poweroff takes 3 times longer than 11.04 (15s instead of 5s).
What can we do about it? Waiting for 12.04 is not an option. Maybe there's a similar tool to Bootchart, but for shutdown procedure? It would be interesting to compare 11.04 and 11.10 poweroff charts.

After a bit of testing in VirtualBox, I'd like to note that startup times are only few seconds longer:
Ubuntu 11.04 ~35.375 sec;
Ubuntu 11.10 ~31.45 sec.

But shut down times are really bad in Ubuntu 11.10:
Ubuntu 11.04 ~3.5 sec;
Ubuntu 11.10 ~20.95 sec.

Fix from this bugreport https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netbase/+bug/903825 decreases shutdown time by ~6 seconds. Majority of shut down time is taken by Unity exiting.

[balkrish999]

I have also Noticed the speed difference! the older version was slightly faster!

[Dennis N]

I would concur with the slowness observations - not just Ubuntu, but also Lubuntu because of the underlying systems. I install new versions on a separate partition, copy my home files over, and evaluate the new version for a period before deciding what to do with the previous one (such as reuse the partition for something else). In this case, I decided to continue using Lubuntu 11.04 ( < 5 sec. shutdown) and abandon Lubuntu 11.10 ( 15 second shutdown). These two distros are otherwise virtually identical from the user's point of view, so it is a no brainer.

Since the next version of Ubuntu is Precise, this will surely be fixed.

[AJ1000]

To get shutdown back to 5 seconds look here:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/87576/slow-shutdown-due-to-modemmanager-and-nm-dispatcher-action

Mine is now back to below 5 seconds.

AJ1000

[ubifree]

Hi Joshas - thanks very much for sharing the bug report at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netbase/+bug/903825. I followed the instructions in there and now 11.10 shuts down much faster (and also the shutting down part of restarting is much faster). The solution mentioned in the bug report was:


The solution:

I renamed the links in /etc/rc0.d and rc6.d:

- S31umountnfs.sh to S05umountnfs.sh
- S35networking to S15networking

I've only just done this but Oneiric now shuts down as fast as Natty did as far as I can tell. I don't know when they're planning to roll out the bug-fix via the Update Manager. Maybe they want to see if the fix has other side-effects first. I haven't noticed any yet.

So now all that needs to be done is speeding up the startup time too;)...

[ubifree]

FYI That bug #903825 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netbase/+bug/903825) I mentioned before has now been marked as a duplicate of Bug #869635 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/869635): "long delay at shutdown/reboot - network-manager doesn't close correctly".

[ubifree]

Yet more on this topic at http://askubuntu.com/questions/67939/why-does-ubuntu-11-10-start-and-shut-down-so-slowly